Statistic

Once again, I find myself in the unenviable role of "statistic". No one wants to feel like anyone
else. Each person, to some degree, wants their soul recognized for the individual achievement
that it is. But life itself is too large to encompass indivual empathy, and the need too presing to
feel special and unique in one's own way. We all dance in this dark carnival, bumping into pier
posts and tripping over crushed cans, searching for meaning and validation. It is much easier
to hustle many individuals to stand under a few neon signs. It is easier to navigate, to cast aside,
to pull apart a person or a group when you think you know what you are getting. This is all a
fallacy, of course. The unkind glow of neon signs light only the darkest highways.

As a child, I was a Catholic schoolgirl, in every way.

I missed the "pregnant teenager" statistic by a mere eight months; I was twenty when I became
pregnant with my first child.

I was a single mom with an infant. Then came another infant. I spent both pregnancies alone.

The father of these children and I did make an effort to stay together. I can't say an effort to
love each other, but I can say to "stay together". I was afraid, for this man always lied
to me. But I ferreted out his goodness and tried to make it stay. We moved to the middle
of the country, devoid of even the smallest sea, and quietly failed.

I moved back to the sea with my two small charges. Two small blonde children, tied to me by
a strange umbilical cord, a pleasant choking. I got a job, found a place to live, and commenced
the art of raising children.

I was a single mom.

My job blossomed into a career, not on a path I would have chosen. One chosen for me by
blonde children and the need for shelter. It was a good career, with a good company.
I grew up. I grew older. Everyone grew.

Then more children came; they came in twos by a man from a faraway place. I could not
marry this man, and he could not marry me. We were too far in distance and temperment.
I had learned my lesson well years ago: finding the goodness in someone does not mean
they are good.

I was a single mom with four children.

The sea rejected me. It wanted people with more time for it, not someone who gloried in
the smell of the morning tide and rode through in the evening in search of scruffed deer.
It needed people with money and music and more money. The sea spit me out.

My career took me to Florida, near a gentler sea. There was only spring and summer there,
with three days of wind to shake dead leaves and live snakes out of the trees, the wind
washing its linens. The sea was indifferent to me and my four children.
But there was someone who was interested.

This person lived in the midwest, devoid of the smallest sea, but his wind leafed through
my branches and shook out the dead. He also sported four children, alone, left in the
wake of his wife's disease. We thought that only we could understand one another.

We were wrong.